


Put It In A Song (The Indie-Rock Remix)

by narceus



Category: Glee
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-08 08:57:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/759515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narceus/pseuds/narceus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Blaine Anderson got impossibly, unexpectedly lucky.</p>
<p>(Or, the one where they're all in a band.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Put It In A Song (The Indie-Rock Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [msmoocow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/msmoocow/gifts).
  * Inspired by [We'll Take Our Chances](https://archiveofourown.org/works/444393) by [msmoocow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/msmoocow/pseuds/msmoocow). 



> This work is, technically, a remix of [We'll Take Our Chances](http://archiveofourown.org/works/444393/chapters/759956) by msmoocow. I got a little carried away, which means that there are bits and pieces of a whole lot of little one-shots and drabbles that you may or may not recognize scattered throughout this fic. Find them all!
> 
> I could never have done any of this without my main motivator, sense-checker, and all-around spare brain. I love her dearly and she knows exactly who she is.
> 
> There's a mini-playlist attached to this fic; track list at the end.

Blaine counts three different cell phone cameras pointed his way on his stop for coffee in the morning. He’s been getting that a lot lately.

It’s worse when he’s out with one of the other guys, even worse when it’s all five--well, four of them, now--together, but Blaine’s still got more individual hits on ONTD and Google Image Search than any of the other guys, even after that girl snuck a camera in while Sam was at work. That’s what Blaine gets for being the frontman.

It’s what he wanted, all those years in Ohio, and when the stage lights go up and the floor lights dim it’s worth it, all of it. All the eyes on him, the _power_ , the way the crowd hangs off his every word and move...it’ll always make up for the pressure of all those eyes on him, judging and demanding over his every word and move.

Blaine doesn’t think any one of them would believe that, the first time he picked up a microphone and stepped out onto a shitty little makeshift stage in somebody’s living room, he wasn’t even _thinking_ about fame. Mostly, he just wanted to get the hell out.

 

+++

 

“You have a gig in three days, and the tour leaves in three weeks,” Tina reminds them. “Since _somebody_ decided to up and quit the band less than a week before you’re supposed to actually headline the Troubadour, you’d better find yourself a replacement guitar player who you can stand to work with by Tuesday night, or I’m going to go up there and play with you _myself_.”

Blaine and Sam exchange glances. “Are you sure you could keep up with it, Tina?” Finn asks. “You don’t really play...”

“That’s my _point_ ,” Tina says. “It is _bass guitar_. If Mike could do it, then anyone can do it. We just need to find somebody who _will_.”

Tina might actually be the scariest friend Blaine has who isn’t a member of Unholy Trinity. She’s subtle about it, but it’s really never, ever a good scene when the band doesn’t do what she wants. That’s what managers are for, though, Blaine guesses: giving orders, and making sure somebody keeps track of all the equipment, and dragging Puck home drunk at four in the morning, and sewing up a split seam in Blaine’s pants thirty seconds before they go on stage, and reading contracts before anybody signs them, and giving orders, and being terrifying, and most especially, being terrifying when people don’t follow her orders. Tina’s pretty good at it. That’s why they’ve kept her since they were fifteen years old.

“If worst comes to worst, I know all the bass parts,” Sam offers. “I can always switch back?”

“No way,” Finn says flatly. “That’s stupid, Sam, if you’re back on bass then who’s playing rhythm guitar?”

“I can pick it up for a couple of songs, maybe,” Blaine offers. “There’s no keyboard on ‘Why Is That T-Rex...’ or ‘Streetlight People’.”

“That’s not a _solution,_ that’s barely even papering over the problem,” Tina says.

“We can ask Santana to cover while we’re out with Unholy Trinity,” Blaine suggests, even though Finn’s afraid of her and Puck keeps trying to get into her pants and she and Sam have a love-hate relationship at best. Santana probably also doesn’t want to play two sets every night, but if it’s the best they’ve got...

“Guys, _chill_ , okay?” Puck says. “I’ve got this. We send out a couple text messages, we hold auditions, and we find somebody we don’t want to punch in the face. R-Money’s got our back.”

Tina deflates. “ _Yes_. See, _that’s_ what an actual plan looks like.”

“We’ve only got a few days, though,” Finn says. “What if they’re all douchebags?”

“Yeah, or worse, what if we get, like, ten great dudes lining up out the door and we can’t decide?” Sam asks. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re kind of a hot commodity here.”

“Then we drag my brother down from Frisco to play for us on Wednesday, and spend the next couple of weeks making all the potential new band members fight it out, Hunger Games style, to see who gets to come on tour,” Puck says, like it makes perfect sense.

“What?” Tina asks, no longer calm. “Puck, that’s not a _plan,_ that’s a _felony_. Do you remember our conversation about felonies? Why do I even have to _ask_ you about the fact that we’ve had _multiple conversations_ about felonies?”

This time, it’s Blaine and Finn who exchange glances. Tina’s taking Mike’s leaving hard, even though Mike hasn’t even broken up with her. Hell, Mike hasn’t even moved out of his and Blaine’s apartment. He made Blaine apology pancakes yesterday morning. But Mike signed up to help out for a while with his friend’s band, not to deal with interviews and tumblr posts and making a whole career out of cramped tour buses and blinding spotlights.

Sam’s not even bothering to look away from his texting now. Blaine just hopes it’s not Mercedes, again. That breakup was hard enough on everybody the first time around.

“Tina,” Blaine says, stepping in before Finn decides _he_ has to do something. “Tina, it’s fine. We’ll hold auditions, just like Puck said. Nobody’s actually going to Hunger Games anybody.”

It’s been a long week, and it’s still Sunday. If they’re really lucky, the bass player of their dreams will come walking in tomorrow morning and they’ll have the next two weeks to relax before the tour.

The Nude Erections have never actually had it _easy_ , any step of the way, but every once in a while they do get extremely, incredibly lucky.

 

+++

 

Blaine has this band because he’s lucky. Blaine has this record deal because he’s lucky. Blaine owes everything in his life to being in the right place at the right time, to Lucy Fabray and Tina Cohen-Chang, to Cooper, and Finn Hudson, and Noah Puckerman and fight club.

Mike Chang doesn’t quite make the top five best and most unlikely things to happen in Blaine’s life, but that’s mostly because he and Sam are tied for the slot. No Sam means no Mike. And Sam’s pretty damn improbable, with his ridiculous impressions and his willingness to take on more and more complicated guitar parts as Blaine wrote them, not to mention his willingness to do whatever it takes to keep this band and his family both afloat for all these years. Sam’s the first guy in Ohio Blaine ever met who didn’t think Blaine had brought basically all of his problems on himself by just not being visibly straight enough. Even Finn and Puck took half of high school to figure out that much.

On the other hand, how many multi-talented med school dropouts do you _meet_ dancing in strip clubs who are willing to take a huge chunk out of their schedule to fill in playing bass in their coworker’s pop-punky little indie band desperately trying to make it big? Blaine hasn’t spent _that_ much time in strip clubs, when he’s not there to support Sam and Mike at work, but he is betting that the answer to that question is _not many_.

Sam’s been working at The Dragon’s Eye almost since they moved to LA, but Mike only started up there about a year ago. They used to go in every once in a while, before they all got signed and Sam finally quit, to cheer Sam on or pick Tina or Blaine up after a rough week. It’s cleaner than the place Sam worked back in Ohio, more varied clientele. They’ve actually got a stripper pole. Blaine had never realized that male strippers could handle a pole like that until LA.

Blaine does his best not to watch too hard, when they’re there for Sam and Mike, because that can only lead to _serious awkwardness_ , but objectively, aesthetically speaking, Mike is really, really good. It’s always kind of a surprise, amid the pulsing lights and throbbing beats, to look up on stage and see him move.

The Dragon’s Eye is all dark shadows and bright spotlights, fast-paced electric rhythms to get the blood pumping. _Do you know who I am? Good, neither do I,_ and Blaine’s seen Sam take off his pants so many times by now that he doesn’t even have to pretend any more, really, that he’s not affected by it. Sam’s got a routine, the hip-shake, the pelvic thrust he always brings to band practice, _if you pay me I can play the fool_ , with the fast and reckless beat. Mike doesn’t even seem to notice the speed of the music any more than he notices the cheap suit he drops, piece by piece, as he wraps himself around the pole, _take what you need ‘til your body’s numb_ , but Mike doesn’t do the stage like Sam does.

When Blaine’s onstage, he keeps his shirt on, even though he can’t see the audience past the spotlights. Sam always whips his off halfway through the set, like it’s some ingrained part of performing for him, now. Puck doesn’t even usually walk on stage wearing a shirt to begin with. Finn hides behind the drum set, and Mike’s always stood off to one side, bent down over the bass guitar, too still for Mike onstage, all his limbs too quiet.

Mike’s a dancer, not a musician. He isn’t just showing up to work, twining himself half-naked around an aluminum pole, waving his ass three nights a week, because he’s desperate to be looked at. Mike’s a _dancer_. He didn’t quit med school to stand still in a corner and play somebody else’s songs. Sam spent three years shaking his ass and taking his clothes off to pay rent, but Mike’s a stripper because it’s the easiest way to pay rent by moving his ass. Blaine’s not going to blame him for that. Not even Tina’s going to blame him for that, once she gets over having her plans pulled apart a little.

There’s nothing _wrong_ with Sam and Mike’s job, not if they don’t mind doing it. Mike’s a good enough dancer to pull his whole heart out onstage, if the guys and occasional women at The Dragon’s Eye weren’t too busy ogling his body. He’s still doing auditions every other week, looking for something _more_.

Sam hip-thrusts at the crowd, when the Nude Erections play, and the crowd goes wild, and Blaine lets him, because it brings them in. Blaine keeps his shirt on when they’re playing outside in hundred-degree heat because...because he does. Not because he thinks it necessarily makes all that much difference. He’s sat in the bar at The Dragon’s Eye often enough. He knows how to work a crowd. _Go on, believe if it turns you on_.

 

+++

 

Blaine’s alarm wakes him up to the smell of frying bacon and brewing coffee. It’s eight in the morning, the album is out, the tour doesn’t start for two more weeks, and technically, he’s supposed to be on vacation. Instead, he’s got to get down to the studio R-Money’s letting them borrow for auditions by 9:30 AM, and then spend the rest of the day meeting every wannabe bass player on the scene. Fuck his life.

On the other hand, it’s not 4 AM, he wasn’t out playing a show and then dragging his own equipment back home until 2, and he doesn’t have to be down at the Daily Grind to open for the morning rush by 5, so Blaine’s already doing a lot better than he was six months ago. Tina wouldn’t let them take much from the label, as far as advances, but Blaine’s rent is paid up through the next couple of months and Blaine is no longer an undead zombie coffee monkey running on caffeine and negative sleep, so, yeah. Score one for selling out.

Also, the bacon smell is both promising and slightly suspicious. Blaine rubs at his eyes, forgoes the shower for now, and pads barefoot into the kitchen.

“Did you make breakfast again?” Blaine asks. Mike is standing in the middle of the kitchen, sizzling bacon in one pan and what appears to be french toast in another. Blaine’s not even surprised to see Puck already at the breakfast bar, most of a full plate still left in front of him.

“Hey, as far as I’m concerned, Mike can make breakfast whenever he wants,” Puck declares, and shoves another piece of bacon into his mouth.

“Aren’t you Jewish?” Blaine asks him. “Seriously, Mike, you don’t have to do this. We get it. Nobody’s blaming you for anything.”

“Tell _that_ to Tina,” Mike says, and deftly flips the french toast in the air. Blaine winces. “What do you think the chances are that she’ll forgive me before you guys all go on tour?”

“Well, you could start by making her breakfast, instead of just your roommate?” Blaine suggests.

“Roommates, and hey, don’t I get a say in this?” Puck asks, mouth half-full.

“You sleep on the couch and don’t pay rent, I’m not sure that counts,” Blaine says. Finn and Sam are planning on letting their lease lapse once the tour starts up, since they won’t be home for two months anyway. Blaine is keeping his apartment because he lived with his brother for a year and a half, when they first got to LA, and now that he doesn’t have to he is never, ever doing that again. Puck, on the other hand, got kicked out of his last girlfriend’s apartment about two months ago, and he hasn’t shown a whole lot of inclination to find his own place since then.

Of course, in a week and a half they’ll all be in bunks, anyway, so it’s not like it matters. Except for Mike, who will be here, cozy and comfortable in an actual bed. Yeah, Blaine can’t actually blame Mike for his decision at all.

“I just hate feeling like I left you guys in the lurch,” Mike says with an awkward shrug. “I feel bad.”

“Yeah, well, _stop_ ,” Blaine says. “This isn’t the kind of thing you have to apologize for. You know where your heart is, and it’s not here. That’s not your fault. Tina will get that, when she stops being so scared we’re going to mess up our one big break. Which we’re _not_ ,” Blaine adds, because Puck looks ready to argue with a mouth full of half-chewed bacon, and the guilty frown on Mike’s face has just fallen right back to where it started. “We’re too good for that. I have faith in this band, and I have faith in you. Okay?”

“Okay,” Mike says. “Then how about calling it a good luck breakfast instead? We used to make them in the dorms right before finals, after we’d been up all night studying. Always helped.” He slides three perfectly-golden slices of french toast onto a plate. Blaine snags the barstool at the counter next to Puck.

“That? I’ll absolutely accept,” Blaine says, and reaches across the counter to snag a mug for the coffee maker.

 

+++

 

R-Money Abrams is the hottest up-and-coming producer on the scene right now, and he thinks the Nude Erections are going places. Granted, at this point everyone from the MTV gossip columnists to the music blogger for Wired thinks that the Nude Erections are going places, but R-Money thought that even before he agreed to produce their album.

He’s sitting there when Blaine and Puck show up to the studio, calm and cool as ever. “Sam’s in the practice room, so we’re just waiting on Finn to get started.”

“I brought doughnuts,” Tina adds brightly.

“Oh, sweet,” Puck says, reaching for the box. Blaine rolls his eyes.

“You literally _just_ ate,” Blaine says, and then bites his lip as Tina looks up in interest.

“Oh?” she asks.

“Yeah, Mike cooked,” says Puck, coming up victorious with something leaking raspberry jelly. Tina looks like she just swallowed something sour. Blaine winces preemptively.

“Where is Finn, anyway?” Abrams asks. “He’s got about five minutes before he’s late, even for Finn.”

“I can try to send him a text,” Blaine offers. He is not above taking the out when it’s offered to him.

“Well, Tina says you’ve got your first guy coming by at ten, so you might want to get back there and help Sam set up,” says Abrams.

Finn eventually shows up at 9:48, right on Finn-time and still twenty minutes before their first guy gets there to audition. It’s a little hard to judge the guy too harshly for being late, when Finn has been operating just slightly out of synch with the entire rest of the world for as long as Blaine has known him, but that’s okay. There are plenty of other things to judge him on.

He’s the cousin of some friend of somebody Abrams produced for last year, or something, and he stands in the middle of the rehearsal space with his head down, staring at his bass, the entire time. Which, okay, Mike hadn’t been big on moving around the stage either, but this guy also can’t seem to hold a conversation of more than five words. Blaine’s not giving him their words, their _music_ , to carry.

Blaine’s a little worried after the first guy leaves that they might be kinda hasty. How can you get to know somebody well enough in half an hour to tell if they can fit into your band? They’d all known Mike for months before Sam finally convinced him to join in. Of course, Sam showed up at that very first audition, out back behind Finn and Puck’s high school, and they’d known he was in within ten minutes. Blaine wants somebody who’ll click like that with the rest of the band. Maybe it’s greedy and maybe it’s unrealistic, but this matters. This music matters. If they have to bribe Puck’s little brother into quitting his job and drag his girlfriend and boyfriend along on the tour as merch girl and roadie, just to have a bass player they can trust, well, maybe that’s what they’ll have to do. It’s a crappy option, but it’s better than... _that_ guy.

Then the next dude shows up, and it’s back to the keyboard again.

The rest of the morning is spent alternating between endless covers of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ (it’s got a kickass bass line, everybody knows it, and Puck won’t kill somebody if he has to play it ten times in one day), equally many run-throughs of ‘Carry Me Home’ (because anybody auditioning for the Nude Erections probably ought to know at least one of their songs, by now, and it’s less high-energy than ‘Light Up The World’ so it won’t have them all flat on their backs by the end of the morning), and some really, really awkward conversations.

There was the second guy, with the awesome guitar skills and the really sweet set of tattoos, until you noticed the _ironic swastikas_ on his shoulders. There was the fourth guy, who was actually a girl, who slid down into the splits and then bent over backwards while she was playing, and then got into a near-shouting match with Puck over veganism and animal rights afterwards. There was the guy who had pretty obviously never even played the bass until that morning, and showed up just to stare at the four of them with round, wide eyes and ask for their autographs. Blaine has a headache by eleven. By one, it’s a little out of hand.

“Please tell me it’s lunchtime,” Sam groans. Tina checks her clipboard.

“You have twenty minutes,” she says. “Unless our next audition decides to show up late, or not at all.

Blaine flops down onto one of the chairs they’ve got set up on the side. “Can we just call it all off if we’re willing to go with somebody we’ve seen already? That one guy wasn’t that bad.”

“Dude, I’m not going to be in a band with some dude who puts _Support Prop 8_ stickers on his guitar case, and neither are you,” Finn says. “You’d last two days on the road before Puck decided he had to kill the guy to defend your honor or something.”

“Day and a half,” Puck corrects. Blaine rolls his eyes.

“Let’s just take our lunch and meet back here at 1:30, okay?” says Finn.

“I’m making a coffee run,” Blaine says, and stands up, the sudden blood rush making his head throb just a little harder. “Text me your orders by the time I get to the coffee place, or you’re all getting tea.”

“I like tea,” says Abrams, and Blaine makes a mental note that when the producer is lending you rehearsal space, you bring back hot drinks and pastries for six.

 

+++

 

Noah Puckerman is the fourth-most improbably lucky thing to ever happen in Blaine’s life, even if he does like to get more protective, with the other band members, than he does with his actual little brother. Certainly a hell of a lot more protective than Blaine’s actual brother ever has been, including the two years when Blaine was actually living in Cooper’s apartment.

The thing about Puck is, for all the times he’s threatened to beat somebody up on Blaine’s behalf--that one time he _did_ , even, when the dude at that bar didn’t want to take ‘no’ for an answer--it’s never been because he thought Blaine couldn’t. It’s always because he knows Blaine _wouldn’t_. Puck was the first guy to ever really get the distinction.

Puck was Finn’s friend first. Way the hell back in sophomore year, when Blaine and Finn were just two guys with a love of music and a vague plan, Puck was the only guy Finn knew who could play the guitar, and was cool enough that he could join a band without worrying about social suicide.

Puck was an accident waiting to happen, a foul mouth in a mohawk, while Blaine was a skinny kid with impeccable manners, a steel-reinforced closet and a tiny little garage band to call his own. They didn’t have a whole lot of common ground, until after the sophomore year fiasco.

‘ _The fiasco_ ,’ that’s what Blaine’s parents called it, usually while they were arguing too loudly downstairs and Blaine was up in his room, waiting for his bones to heal. Finn called it a lot of things, like “this is Ohio”, and “this is what _happens_ when you do something like taking a guy to a school dance,” and “this is how it works around here, Blaine,” sounding aggrieved and impotently angry and maybe, in retrospect, more than a little bit betrayed that Blaine had only just come out to his own bandmates by text message from the hospital bed.

Blaine didn’t bother to leave his room for two weeks, Finn didn’t come by to visit, and he and Puck weren’t close yet, then. Instead, Blaine cranked up the volume on his headphones and did his makeup schoolwork with his left hand. It took work to find music that didn’t make him want to throw things at the wall--his iTunes was half insipid eighties pop music and half the result of a long-standing friendship with Finn, and Finn’s ridiculous emo Dashboard Confessional obsession really _would_ make Blaine want to slit his wrists right now. There were a few songs, here and there, that he could handle. _You’re a regular decorated emergency._

Puck waited until Blaine’s wrist was out of the sling to show up. Blaine’s still not sure how he knew. Maybe Facebook. Maybe he was already familiar with how long a sprained wrist takes to heal.

“So tell me one thing,” Puck said, arms crossed, looking as out of place in Blaine’s parents’ perfect living room as a shelter mutt in a china shop. “What those assholes did to you. You gonna get revenge?”

“It was dark,” Blaine said, so tired of having this same conversation yet again. “The police can’t be sure about our ID, so they’re not pressing charges.”

“Okay,” said Puck. “Are you pissed off right now, or are you scared? ‘Cause if you’re scared, you know, Finn is kind of a dick but even if you’re a homo now, you’re still _our_ homo, so all you have to do is tell me who those assholes were and we’ll take care of it for you.”

“Um...thanks?” Blaine said to him. He wasn’t scared, not really. Depressed, frustrated, furious with himself and everybody else in the entire _world_ , maybe...

“And if you’re pissed,” Puck said, “I can help you with that, too.”

The first night Puck brought him to fight club, Blaine went into the ring with a couple of ribs still bruised and the fading green of a black eye on his face. He came out again spitting blood, all his half-healed injuries bruised up fresh and new, but this time the other guy had tapped out first. Blaine’s head was ringing with adrenaline and the aftermath of one good hit to the jaw. _If you can’t take the kid from the fight, take the fight from the kid._ Not today. Not as long as Blaine could still hit back.

By the time he made up with Finn two weeks later, Blaine had three new rushing, jangling melodies running around his head, upbeat with just a nasty little hint of an edge. Finn showed up with scribbled words that were half anger and half apology, plus a whole lot of bewilderment at the world in general. They got some of their best songs out of those weeks.

Puck brought him to fight club every week for the rest of that semester, until Blaine started at Dalton and got enough social traction to start up an offshoot of his own. There are branches all over LA, and Blaine doesn’t go much any more--stage adrenaline is almost as good, and he makes a living off his face and how fast his fingers can play the keyboard, now--but every once in a while, when the pressure and the constant staring eyes all get to be too much, Blaine will show up for a night. Puck does the same thing, he thinks, once in a while. _It’s not so pleasant, and it’s not so conventional,_ but nothing in Blaine’s life actually counts as _normal_ anymore anyway, right? He’s a rock star now. He deals.

 

+++

 

Blaine hits the hipster little coffee shop that’s just barely within walking distance of Abrams’ studio, and comes back carefully balancing six full cups of coffee and the remnants of the large regular drip, no cream, plenty of sugar, that took care of most of his headache. Their 1:30 should be here any minute, which means Blaine’s lost out on any chance to steal half of Sam’s peanut-butter sandwich and have a real lunch, but he snagged a muffin at the coffee place, so he should be--

“Excuse me.”

There’s a guy standing on the sidewalk, right in front of the unassuming little building where R-Money has his studio space. He’s carrying a sleek, well-kept guitar case in one hand, which doesn’t mean anything necessarily, not when he’s standing in front of a music studio, but Blaine mentally crosses his fingers that this guy is their next audition, and he’s not insane. Blaine will even consider forgiving him for being a bad bass player. This guy is _gorgeous_.

“Hi,” says the guy. “Can I ask you a question? I haven’t been here before.” Which definitely proves that he’s here for the studio, and maybe, _maybe_ hopefully the Nude Erections audition and not that folk band Abrams said was recording down the hall.

He doesn’t look like he’d be in a folk band. He’s tall, with three extra inches of hair gelled straight up into a pompadour on top, collared shirt, tie, and vest, and hipster-tight skinny jeans covered in little skulls. He doesn’t really look like he’s here to audition for their little pop-punk-influenced indie rock band, either. He looks like he ought to be working for a fashion magazine somewhere. On either side of the camera. Blaine would look at those pictures.

Blaine still has manners, even if he doesn’t have a free hand, so he smiles at the guy as warmly as possible to make up for the lack of handshake. “My name’s Blaine,” he says.

“Kurt,” says the boy. “Here, let me help you with those.” There’s an awkward dance of Kurt shifting his guitar case around, Blaine re-balancing his drink trays before he passes over the lighter of the two, with Tina’s small mint soy latte, Sam’s skinny double shot no-fat no-sugar no-whip mocha, and R-Money’s tea. “Assuming we’re headed to the same place, can you tell me which building we’re in? Finn’s directions weren’t very clear.”

Oh. “You know who I am,” Blaine says. Kurt shrugs a little, somehow managing not to dislodge the strap of his guitar case or jostle the cups in his hands at all.

“The Nude Erections are a little like rock stars,” he says. Blaine ducks his head and hopes that he’s not actually starting to blush.

“So,” Kurt prompts. “The audition?”

“Come on,” Blaine says, throwing all caution to the winds. If Kurt’s terrible, then Blaine will never have to see him again after today anyway. Blaine shifts his coffee tray to one arm and grabs for Kurt’s free hand with his own. “I know a short cut.”

+++

 

It’s not actually a short cut.

Blaine takes Kurt around behind the building, in through the back door, and if he does that mainly because he wants to show off that he’s important enough to know the key code, then, well, nobody has to know the difference. If he leads them around the back route mostly because it will end up taking twice as long through twisting, convoluted concrete-gray hallways to get where they’re going, well, nobody has to know that either. Kurt’s hand is incredibly soft, and warm and dry against Blaine’s palm. Blaine should really say something, maybe something smart, something witty, but all he really comes up with is, “So.”

“So?” Kurt parrots back with a wry, sideways look. Blaine grins back.

“So, what’s your most controversial political view?” That...hadn’t entirely been what he’d meant to ask. Kurt raises his eyebrows, but at least he doesn’t let go of Blaine’s hand. Success!

“I once broke up with somebody over gay marriage,” Kurt offers, and Blaine stiffens. Kurt’s _still_ holding his hand, and usually Blaine’s gaydar is pretty finely-tuned, but it’s been a long and tiring morning. It could be a blip.

“Oh?” Blaine asks, doing his best to sound casual.

“He thought it was a heteronormative sham intended to enforce conformity onto queer relationships,” says Kurt. “I want a wedding someday. With flocks of doves.”

Blaine relaxes. “You should fit right in,” he tells Kurt, and they’re at the door to the rehearsal space, so Blaine has to drop his hand. Quickly. Before Puck can see and start making lewd comments about it.

Kurt looks startled for a second, so Blaine has to cover by clearing his throat and drawing everybody’s attention to the doorway. “Coffee has arrived,” he says.

“Fucking _finally_ ,” Puck groans. Finn thumps him on the side of the head with his drumsticks.

“Dude, language. We’ve got a guest.”

“Yeah,” Blaine says, ushering Kurt into the room. “I found a stray in the parking lot.”

“Kurt Hummel?” Tina asks, glancing at her clipboard. “You’re next on our list.”

“And I brought bribes,” Kurt says brightly, with a grin that fades a little at everybody’s questioning looks.

“He helped me carry the coffee,” Blaine cuts in quickly, as Kurt opens his mouth to explain. Which he shouldn’t do, it’s not polite, but things were about to get awkward and Blaine...he _likes_ Kurt. After all of two minutes’ acquaintance. He wants Kurt to work out. “Everybody come and get it, I’m not your waiter.”

The band descends on the drink trays like a pack of hungry and somewhat caffeine-deprived wolves, and Blaine backs off quickly before he loses a hand. Kurt sits down in one corner, unsnaps his guitar case, and pulls out a sleek black bass guitar. The strap matches his pants, but the skulls are mixed with little hearts. Blaine might be in love.

“So,” says Tina. “I’m Tina Cohen-Chang, the band manager, and Puck, Finn, and Sam, and you met Blaine. So first, you’re going to tell us a little bit about yourself, and then you’re all going to play some songs together, and we’ll get back to you by the end of the day.”

+++

Blaine meets the people who turn out to matter in his life in the most unlikely of places. For Tina, it was Asian Camp.

The summer before sophomore year of high school, long before LA, before Sam answered their flyer, way before Dalton or fight club of Sadie Hawkins, before Blaine or Finn even dared to think about leaving behind the endless string of covers and writing some songs of their own--that was the year Blaine’s parents decided, after a lifetime of hair gel and good old American meat loaf at the dinner table, that Blaine should really learn to embrace his ethnic heritage. Blaine privately suspects his mom read something about it in a magazine.

So there he was, one short, scrawny fifteen-year-old boy who’d spent the better part of his entire life so far passing for _normal_ , whatever that means, in every possible way. And there she was, with her bright blue hair extensions and her thick goth eyeliner, stuttering every time somebody asked her a direct question and not saying a word besides that. Tina Cohen-Chang.

Tina liked pop music more than goth-rock metal, dancing more than arts and crafts, liked watching the boys in camp play beach volleyball shirtless by the lake more than she liked swimming. Blaine partnered her for dance lessons, and let her direct him, with subtle push and nudge, even though he was supposed to be in the lead. They spent the long edges of summer afternoons on the shade-side of the cabins, sharing iPod earbuds. _I’ve got a hunger twisting my stomach into knots_. They’d wish out loud that camp would just be _over_ , and wish out loud that the summer would never end, and wish, in the quiet of their fingers drawing meaningless patterns in the dirt, for a thousand more things they didn’t have the words to say.

Blaine went with Tina down to the sandy little shore of the lake and pretended to watch her instead of the shirtless boys playing volleyball, while she pretended to watch the shirtless volleyball players instead of him. Blaine ducked his head when the boys finished their game and headed back up the trail towards camp, and Tina ducked her head when Blaine tried to meet her eyes, and they headed back up to their ipods and the shady side of their cabin.

_And I’ll sit and wonder_ “Blaine?”

“Yeah, Tina?” _of every love that could have been_

“You’re gay, right?” _if I'd only thought of something charming to say._

Deep breath. “Yeah.” Only later, Blaine realized that Tina hadn’t stuttered asking the question. She scooted her little finger across the patch of dirt between them and linked it with his, and that was enough.

Tina let him come out. Tina looked at him like he could do anything. Tina listened to Blaine sing along with the music on the iPod, when the fading amber afternoons fell into evening, and told him that he ought to write his own songs.

Tina waited for a year for their first full demo tape. Blaine brought it to her the first day of Asian Camp, a twelve-track playlist on his iPod that nobody, not even their Myspace friends, had seen before. Tina didn’t stutter at all, just tucked her long, red-streaked hair behind her ear to put in one earbud, and offered the other one to Blaine, just like old times.

When the whole playlist was over, Tina stretched up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. “You’re going places, Blaine Anderson, if I have to drag you there myself,” she said. “I told you. No settling.”

+++

 

The bar is loud, and crowded, and Blaine _knows_ he didn’t order the drink that’s being put down in front of him. “Santana, what’s this?”

“Sex on the beach,” she informs him, and slides down onto Brittany’s lap, balancing the last two drinks carefully without spilling a drop. “In celebration of you finally getting some.”

Quinn smirks. Blaine rolls his eyes.

“Nobody’s getting anything,” he says. “We haven’t even made our final decision yet. We might end up going with that guy who showed up wearing purple spandex and tried to set his guitar on fire at the end of the set.” Though their stage show budget _would_ go pretty fast, that way.

“Please,” says Quinn. “Trust us, Blaine. How long have we known you? We know your ‘about to get laid’ look.”

“I don’t have an ‘about to get laid’ look,” Blaine says, ducking his head to reach his straw and hide his blush. It’s not a rum and coke, but sex on the beach is pretty tasty.

“You so do,” Santana informs him. “It’s actually adorable, and also a little pathetic.”

Blaine sighs. “See if I’m ever your source for gossip on the inner workings of my band again,” he says.

“Please. You love us, don’t lie,” says Santana. “We’re hilarious _and_ we know all your deepest, darkest secrets. Like how you totally want to bone your band’s new bass player.”

“Even if I _was_ into him,” all three girls roll their eyes, “and even if he had any reason to be into me--”

“Oh, he’ll be into you,” says Santana. “I have it on good authority that among certain segments of the gay population, your whole cute little Bambi-eyed rockstar in a gelmet schtick is total kryptonite or something.”

Blaine eyes her suspiciously. “Are your sources Sebastian?” Santana promised she’d stop talking to Sebastian Smythe after the last inter-label feud got both of them arrested and made the top-commented posts on ONTD and Perez Hilton for two weeks straight. Though Blaine honestly finds them both more terrifying when they _don’t_ hate each other.

“Who can say,” Santana says, waving a hand. “The point is, you’re a rockstar _and_ a total puppydog. People who’re into dick apparently like that, so you’re going to need a better excuse.”

“It’s bad for band morale!” Blaine says wildly.

“Really,” Quinn says.

Santana reaches over Brittany’s arm to grab Brittany’s drink, then helpfully holds it up so Brittany can take a sip out of the straw. Blaine can’t see Brittany’s other hand any more. He probably doesn’t want to know where it is.

“Um,” says Blaine.

“So if you’re going to be dating someone _and_ bringing him into the close-knit incestuous family that is our label, you have to tell us all about him first,” Brittany says seriously. “We have to know everything. What’s his favorite kind of cat, what’s his favorite color, what his wicked stepmother’s like so we can help you know how to defeat her in battle.”

“I don’t actually know...any of those,” Blaine admits. Especially the battle one. “I’m sort of hoping to avoid the whole _battle_ thing.”

Brittany shakes her head. “You’re a failure, Blaine Charming,” she says. “That’s no way to find your true love.”

“Enough about true love,” Quinn says. She’s drinking something vividly, electrically pink, almost the same shade as her hair, and Blaine’s pretty sure it’s got as much alcohol in it as everything else on the table combined. “How hot is he?”

“If you can describe him without writing a Shakespearean sonnet to his skull pants again,” Santana adds.

Blaine glances around at three expectant, implacable faces, and sighs. “Guys...”

“Come on, Prince Charming,” Quinn cajoles. “He’s hot, isn’t he.”

Blaine slumps forward with a groan. “ _So_ hot,” he admits, and the girls all cackle. “Oh my god, his ass in those pants.”

“Okay, this conversation calls for phallic bar food,” Santana declares. “I went up last round. Quinn, go find a waitress and harass her until she brings us cheese sticks and chicken wings.”

“Chicken wings aren’t phallic,” Blaine says. Santana laughs.

“They are when Santana eats them,” Quinn says, easing herself carefully out of the booth onto her feet. “Or at least they’re plenty suggestive. Don’t push him too hard while I’m gone.”

“Us? Never,” Santana promises, with a wicked grin. Blaine takes another hard gulp of his drink.

+++

Blaine has a hangover.

No, correction. Blaine has _god’s own hangover_.

Ugh. This is what happens when he goes out drinking with Unholy Trinity. Every single time. He’s just lucky Puck managed to set up that last-minute booty call with their manager, because Lauren can drink even _Quinn_ under the table.

Blaine vaguely remembers the underside of the table, last night. It had been nice. Not that much old gum.

“Okay, decision time!” Sam says, rubbing his hands together. “I say we call that Kurt kid back and get this over with.”

“Puck?” Finn asks.

“I’m down,” Puck agrees. “If you think he can put up with us. If he’s going to run for cover the first time he hears Finn here jizzing into a sock in his bunk, there’s no way he’s gonna make seven weeks on tour.”

“Dude,” Finn objects. “Seriously.”

“Yes, _thank you,_ Finn,” Tina says. “We’re not on tour yet, there’s still a little thing called _manners_.”

“He wasn’t the best player,” Blaine feels compelled to say. Why is he objecting? His pounding headache doesn’t know. “That guy with the plaid thing and the hipster glasses was better.”

“The neo-Nazi or the vegan?” Sam asks. Blaine blinks.

“I thought the girl was the vegan,” he says.

“There were two vegans,” says Tina. “And we’re not taking either of them. We all liked Kurt, right?”

“I liked Kurt,” says Finn. “Rachel likes Kurt. She says he’s a good guy.”

“Oh, Rachel knows him?” Sam asks. The backs of Blaine’s eyelids are cool, and dark, and not stabbing at his brain. Excellent.

“Yeah, he does some stuff for _Sing!_ ,” Finn says. “They have coffee sometimes. She’s the one who gave him our name.”

“Great,” says Tina. “Finn likes Kurt, Sam likes Kurt, Puck likes Kurt, Blaine likes Kurt, and most importantly I like Kurt. It’s settled, I’ll call him right away and try to get him in for a rehearsal before tomorrow night.”

“I didn’t say--” Blaine starts, then lets it drop. He _does_ like Kurt. Quinn, Santana, and Brittany took turns last night dragging out just how much. Kurt tells hilarious jokes in total deadpan, and then laughs at them awkwardly when nobody else smiles. Kurt unapologetically cites Lady Gaga and the Beatles as two of his greatest musical influences in an audition for a pop-punk band. Kurt’s _ass_ in those _pants_. Blaine likes Kurt _way too much_.

“Like we couldn’t tell by the drooling,” Puck says. There’s the slap of a high-five somewhere over near Puck and Sam that makes Blaine wince. Maybe he’ll just keep lying here on the couch with his eyes closed until somebody puts him out of his misery. Or forever. That works too.

“You like him,” Tina says. “And even if you don’t like him, you like him, because we all like him, and we need a bass player before tomorrow night. He’s in.”

“Dude, it’ll be okay,” Finn says. “Just, you know, if you guys start flirting, save it for the stage where all the fangirls go crazy and don’t start making out on the tour bus.”

“We’re not going to make out on the tour bus,” Blaine promises tiredly. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Good,” says Sam. “Because that time we all walked in on Puck with his tongue down that girl’s throat and his hands up her--”

“Language!” says Tina.

“I’m just saying, that was pretty scarring,” Sam finishes. “And I’m used to getting naked onstage.”

“You just wish you had my game,” Puck says.

 

+++

 

It’s been seven years since Blaine met Finn Hudson. Seven whole years, crazy, impossible, occasionally-terrible and sometimes fantastic that they’ve been. It’s on Finn.

It seems like it’s been a lot longer, but that’s Finn for you. Finn kind of always runs on his own time. When he sets down the drums, it’s a perfect, steady backbeat for the rest of them to latch onto, he’s just really shitty at dealing with anybody else’s timeclock or metronome. If Kurt can’t work with Finn, then they’re all fucked. Finn _is_ their rhythm section. He’s the backbone of this band. He _started_ the fucking band.

Blaine never would’ve done anything, alone. He’d have spent the rest of high school lurking around the edges of parties, avoiding the knots of giggling girls trying to set people up for Truth or Dare, or Spin the Bottle, or Seven Minutes in Heaven.

Blaine did his seven minutes in Marcy Rogers’ basement when he was twelve. Once. Once was enough. Truth or Dare could be okay, if you were a good enough liar to get away with picking _truth_ all the time. The dares were always worse.

They were playing truth or dare the night that Blaine met Finn, over in the back den of the house of the first cousin of a couple of guys Blaine knew from the junior fencing league. There were more than a hundred people spilling from room to room, laughing, flirting, making out against walls and spilling solo cups full of something Blaine was in no way old enough to be drinking. The other party guests weren’t old enough, either, but most of them were older than Blaine. It was a real, live high school party, the summer before Blaine’s very first year of high school. From what Blaine could tell, it was pretty much exactly like a junior high party, only with more beer.

And the band. He’d never been to a junior high party with a live band.

They weren’t very good. Blaine doesn’t even remember their name, now, he’s not sure he ever saw them play again after that night. They were the next-door neighbors of somebody’s best friend’s cousin, or something, a trio of sixteen-year-old guys with broken-down guitars and amps that must have been held together with duct tape and wire. They probably practiced in somebody’s garage, wrote their own terrible songs about teen angst and emo in their own bedrooms. Blaine would bet that they played birthday parties and backyard barbecues and anywhere somebody would give them fifty bucks or just agree to watch them, just once, just for five minutes in a row. At least, that’s what Blaine figures. The Nude Erections _were_ that kind of terrible, wonderful little garage band for years.

You can make something like a makeshift stage by dragging a couple of couches out of the way in somebody’s living room and hoping your amps don’t blow a fuse when you plug them into the wall socket. Compared to the kind of shows Blaine plays now, well. The glancing attention of a couple dozen high schoolers mostly only interested in the insides of each others’ pants is like half a cup of weak tea next to the Red-Bull-and-espresso-shot _rush_ of a dark room full of hundreds of people, crowded shoulder to shoulder and screaming every single word in perfect unison right back to you. In the total wasteland that was adolescence in Lima, Ohio, though, that first hit of attention had been _everything_.

Blaine wonders about that first band, sometimes. He’d have heard about it if anybody else from their little corner of Ohio managed to make it big, but Blaine still hopes, sometimes, that they at least got _out_.

Anyway. Finn.

Here’s why Finn Hudson will always be one of the most spectacular pieces of total luck in Blaine’s entire life. Blaine slunk into his teammate’s cousin’s living room and pressed his back against the wall so he could watch the band without being noticed. He’d never been that close to live music before, not unless you count piano recitals and school band. And Blaine closed his eyes, just for a minute, because he could feel the thump of the big bass drum reverberate through the air and shake the floorboards that were probably not meant for this much stress. And when Blaine opened his eyes, and glanced to the right, the tall, gawky, gangly kid pressed against the wall next to him was just opening his.

And the lead singer leaned into his microphone and announced a twenty-minute set break.

Somebody, somewhere, hooked a laptop up to a couple of speakers and queued up a random playlist with minimal care for what fit the atmosphere of the party, nothing like as loud as the wail of the electric guitar just moments before. The speakers were close enough that Blaine could make out lyrics over the general murmur of the party, _do you know what I was put here in this world for_ , but his ears were ringing with the sudden quiet.

“Hi,” said Blaine, who had always been taught to be polite. The kid looked like he’d been caught in the middle of something he’d known better than to do in public, so Blaine smiled. So Finn smiled back.

Finn Hudson was fourteen years old, with a drum set and a desperate, burning desire to be popular that almost matched how badly Blaine needed to be liked. Finn only knew two people at the whole party, and both of them disappeared within the first ten minutes of getting there. Finn was as wary of Truth or Dare as Blaine was, for reasons of his own. Blaine didn’t ask. Finn didn’t ask back.

Finn thought the live band was pretty good. He had a thing for indie bands that nobody had ever heard of, and he was totally wrong about which one was better, but he’d actually _heard_ of both Joy Division and New Order. He was skeptical but willing to listen to Blaine’s list of reasons why Roxy Music changed the face of modern music forever. More to the point, he didn’t _mock_ Blaine’s list of reasons why Roxy Music changed the face of modern music forever, which is why Blaine didn’t mock Finn’s Dashboard Confessional obsession even a little.

The whole party ebbed and flowed around them, but this was good, this was great. Nobody bothered you at this kind of party, if you had somebody to talk to and a cup in your hand, even if the cup was full of nothing but Coke and ice, sometimes even if the cup was empty. Nobody forced you to do anything, so long as you looked like you were having fun. _This is the modern way of faking it every day._ Finn kept shooting little glances over at the knots of people all over the room, like he wanted to be seen and wanted to hide all at once. Like he wanted to be _part_ , but oh god, the Truth or Dare, the Spin the Bottle. Those seven minutes in Marcy Rogers’ basement. Yeah. _We’re not the only ones._

“Hey,” Blaine said, before his brain could stop his mouth. “You should Facebook me when you get home. I can show you what I mean about Bryan Ferry.”

“Hey, yeah!” Finn’s grin was wide and genuine. “I’m sending you the first Dashboard album, okay, you’ve got to listen to the whole thing or you can’t judge.”

“Deal,” said Blaine, and meant it, and _Finn_ meant it, because by the time Blaine woke up the next morning he had a Facebook friend request and a Megaupload link in his email.

High school started right on schedule, loud and friendly and just fine except for all the ways Blaine had to swallow bits and pieces of himself down, just in case. He got into twenty different arguments with Finn on Facebook over modern music, classic rock, indie influences, and how much Pitchfork’s reviews could ever be trusted. They were at different schools, but their social circles overlapped. They ended up at the same parties a lot.

They ended up standing against basement and backyard and living room walls five feet from terrible garage bands together a lot, avoiding the eyes of girls who made Finn blush because he had no idea what to say to make them happy, and Blaine blush because he had no idea what to say to make them stop. And the song said, _there’s no point in sitting, going crazy on my own._

And Finn said, “Hey, you know, we should start our own band.” _It’s the only way of getting out of here._

And Blaine said, “Yeah. Sure.”

 

+++

 

So now Blaine has a band.

They’re loud, and crude, and filthy, all jostle and shove like the best group of brothers Blaine never had. Sam gets all of his jokes, all of his references, sees right through Blaine every time he tries to edge away. Puck’s been on a near-constant campaign of trying to get Blaine happily laid, one way or another, since before they even got out to LA where it was more or less safe. Tina’s their bossy, protective, long-suffering sister. Finn’s Blaine’s co-parent, solid partner, holding things together from the back while Blaine takes the front. They’re family, and Blaine wouldn’t give them up. Not for anything, not even for fame. Not even to get away from fame, and every time Blaine counts another cameraphone pointed in his direction on the way to get his morning coffee he starts thinking a little more seriously about running away 

This new album, this tour...this is _it_. This is what they’ve been aiming at the whole time. When they were seventeen years old in Lima, Ohio, and Puck was fucking middle-aged divorcees in exchange for getting to host band practice in their garages, and Sam was up all night delivering pizzas and dragging his little brother and sister along to practice in the afternoons. Back in those days when Finn was using every ounce of popularity he’d ever managed to acquire to get them gigs in the corner of somebody’s living room, and Blaine was just trying to hold himself together with hair gel and guitar strings. _This_ was the dream. This was what they’d all been waiting for. The day when all the scornful looks and the eyes passing right over them would actually stop, and watch, and see something _worthwhile_.

God, Blaine hopes Kurt can make it work with them. This isn’t a _job_. This is love, this is family, this is their whole _life_ , from the moment they wake up in a rough approximation of morning. Mike didn’t want all of that all the time, and Blaine can’t fault him. God, he hopes Kurt will.

The Troubadour is packed, dark and loud and smelling like sweat and spilled beer by the time the opener ends. Kurt is fidgeting anxiously with the strap on his guitar, getting it to lay _just right_ , which is great except that Brett the tech is hovering anxiously nearby, because he has to get the guitar plugged in and set up before the band can actually go onstage.

It hasn’t been that long since before the band even had techs to do things like that for them. Blaine comes up behind Kurt and lays his hands on Kurt’s shoulders; Kurt, to his credit, only jumps a little.

“Hey,” Blaine says. “They’ve got to take that, actually. Here, let me help--” His hands brush Kurt’s and tangle in the strap, lifting the guitar up over Kurt’s head. Brett looks desperately relieved that his whole world system hasn’t been completely overturned. Kurt mostly just looks lost. Blaine squeezes his shoulders again.

“You’re going to be _fine_ ,” Blaine promises.

“I’m not nervous,” Kurt says immediately. “Please don’t judge me.”

“I think it’s adorable,” Blaine admits. “We’re going to be great. _You’re_ going to be great. You know all the songs we’re playing tonight, you killed it at sound check, and we are all going to be just fine.” For someone with only a day and a half to learn his parts, Kurt’s been fantastic. Blaine guesses that’s what they get from a guy who works on _Sing!_. Rachel says they have to learn everything in a week or less, all the time. That’s got to mean the session musicians, too. “Seriously, even if somebody has a heart attack and dies onstage, it can’t be any worse than this one time when we were touring in upstate New York, and somebody threw a bottle of--”

“Blaine,” Kurt interrupts. “Not helping.”

“Right,” Blaine says. “Look, the important thing is, you’re going to be great.” Blaine’s used to giving pep talks to Finn and sometimes Sam. Clearly he needs to expand his repertoire.

The stage lights glare white-hot, blinding for that first second just like always, so Blaine’s first few steps onto the stage are nothing but a flare of bright light and the sudden explosion of shouts and cheers ringing across the room, echoing in his ears.

Blaine takes a deep breath, and glances back over his shoulder as the rest of the band files into place. Puck and Sam sling their guitars over their shoulders as easy as shrugging on a favorite old shirt. Kurt settles his more carefully, precisely, but all his buzzing seems more focused now under the lights.

Finn picks up his drum sticks, looks up to meet Blaine’s eyes, and nods. Blaine wraps a hand around the microphone and turns to face the audience. The audience _roars_.

Blaine was right. They kill it.

 

+++

 

They have an interview on Thursday morning, some radio show thing. Tina makes the executive decision that Kurt should be there about an hour and a half before it happens, although Blaine sees her corner Kurt in the hall of the broadcasting station before they go on and he barely says two words when he’s not answering a direct question. It’s fine. Blaine is used to doing most of the talking at these things, bouncing back and forth off of Sam when they need a witty repartee, Finn chiming in to be proud and earnest and just a little confused every question or two. Tina’s cornered _Puck_ in the hallways of enough broadcasting stations that he knows better than to say too much when there’s a microphone around.

They’ll have to work Kurt into their dynamic sooner or later, if he sticks. He handled the first show just fine once the music started. Kurt moves a lot more than Mike onstage, and it seems like he gravitates towards the front and center, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s a Kurt thing. They’ll work it out.

Blaine can’t _figure_ Kurt, not really. He’s still a little awkward around the rest of the guys, with his weird jokes and his constantly-dramatic wardrobe. Blaine likes Kurt’s jokes, and he even loves the wardrobe. He just has no idea why a guy who wears knockoff Alexander McQueen vests wants to spend almost two months rattling around the US in a tin can on wheels with a bunch of guys who can sometimes forget that ‘showering’ means more than sticking your head under a faucet once every other week. 

Kurt seems determined, and he’s good at the music, so Blaine is _hoping_ here. Whatever his reasons are...well, secrets like that always tend to come out on tour.

The rest of the week is a mess of packing, and more interviews, last-minute rehearsals and even laster-minute arrangements. Blaine _finally_ manages to schedule and then actually keep a lunch with Cooper, since it’ll be another two months before they’re even in the same city again. Cooper has turned out to be a lot more tolerable now that they’re not actually living in the same apartment any more, even if he is taking credit for the Nude Erections’ entire rise to fame himself. Blaine lets him have it. Blaine _did_ get invited to the party where he first met Quinn mostly on Cooper’s say, so it might even be sort of true.

Two days before the tour is scheduled to roll out, Santana calls Blaine to inform him that he’s throwing a party.

“Why me, exactly?” Blaine asks. Sadly, by now he knows better than to argue.

“Because the rest of us either have subletters moving in this week or don’t have roommates to clean up after we trash the place while we’re gone,” she says. “You said Chang’s been doing the whole ‘remorse’ thing, right? Let’s put it to good use.”

“Santana...” Blaine says.

“Oh, what, just because we’ve got Hummel the Wonder Queer taking his place, he’s off the hook?” Santana scoffs. “I’m withholding judgment on the new guy. You can’t really tell what a person’s made of until you’ve seen them trashed on Jagerbombs and then trying to work through the hangover the next day. Which means I wants to see your new boytoy trashed before I spend an entire tour with him, you got me?”

Blaine sighs. “I take it you’re bringing the Jagermeister?” he asks. “We’ve got mixers and I’m sure Puck will take care of the vodka, but if Becky’s coming and she’s going to want that fancy craftbrew stuff, she’s bringing it herself.”

“Becky Jackson is evil incarnate,” Santana says. Blaine is, as ever, very glad that on a cell phone Santana can’t see him grin.

“Did she tell you the label wouldn’t back your pyrotechnics again?” he asks.

“Bitch searched my luggage,” Santana says. “She even confiscated the freaking sparkler sticks.” Blaine knows better than to ask how Becky got access to Santana’s luggage. Becky Jackson is, without exception, the scariest person their label employs. There aren’t a lot of people who’d be able to keep Santana from burning a stage down sooner or later, though, so Blaine is usually cautiously grateful for her. When she’s not slapping him on the ass. Security only protects him from the fangirls, and management still doesn’t qualify.

“So I’ll ask Tina to invite her?” Blaine offers innocently. Santana curses at him in Spanish and hangs up the phone on him. It’s honestly how most of their calls end.

If there’s one thing a whole bunch of B- and C-list rockstars can do on half a day’s notice, it’s put together one hell of a party. It’s not the first time Blaine and Mike’s apartment has been the scene of this much revelry, and it won’t be the last. They’ve got the routine down, pretty much: all electronics not in use stashed away safely under beds, knife block goes in the bottom of the cabinet next to the fridge in case somebody decides to challenge their friends to a ninja duel in the middle of the night, not that _that’s_ ever happened before or anything, roll up the rug and make sure the slipcover is safely on the couch. Make sure the XBox is set up in front of the TV and hide Rock Band, because nobody needs to bring competition over their day jobs to a party like this, and Wii MarioCart, because Puck gets _violent_ over his games.

By eleven, the apartment is wall-to-wall people, spilling out onto the balcony and probably annoying the crap out of all the neighbors. Either Blaine or Mike will have to make the rounds with apologies and six-packs, tomorrow. Once again: won’t be the first time, won’t be the last.

Two drinks in, and Blaine’s world is all wobbly, bright colors and moving shapes, the peal of Quinn’s sharp laughter cutting through the other noise. Santana is yelling at somebody in Spanish again, which means that the shirt draped over the lampshade is probably Brittany’s. R-Money’s in a corner of the living room with his latest starlet draped over his lap, and Blaine spares a moment to hope wonder if _Sugar_ would be more unfortunate as a badly-chosen stage name, or an actual name somebody once gave their baby.

Joe the guitar tech isn’t drinking, but he seems to be having plenty of fun losing miserably to Sam at Mortal Kombat, so that’s just fine. Usually Puck and Finn are all over the video games--Blaine scans the room and spots Finn looking grimly determined next to Rachel, and oh look, Rachel brought her co-star to the party. Somebody, hopefully somebody who is not Blaine, is either going to have to rescue Finn or Jesse before the night is out, and they’d all better hope it’s from each other and not from _Rachel_.

He finds Puck and Lauren in the walk-in pantry, which is, yet again, more than he ever needed to see of either of them. Mike’s door has been closed all night, but now there are low voices coming from behind it, which means that Mike and Tina are _finally_ making up. And that’s it, that’s the list, all the people Blaine cares enough about to glance around for them in this chaos of a party--oh, except for one. There’s Kurt now, too.

Blaine snags another cup full of Santana’s mystery punch as he passes by the booze table, because he’s a rockstar now and that means he’s supposed to live dangerously. Kurt’s not in the knot of people clustered around the couch shouting out bets while Sam’s game avatar beats Joe’s into a pulp yet again, or out on the balcony with the smokers and the stoners. Then Blaine turns around, and he’s right there.

There’s a little section of the living room floor they always leave clear, right near the stereo speakers, for dancing. Brittany’s there, half-naked as expected and swinging Santana around with wild abandon, and half a dozen other people Blaine probably knows, and Kurt. Shimmying his shoulders and moving his hips, and he should be drawing every eye in the apartment, but maybe it’s just Blaine.

Kurt. Kurt makes no fucking sense. Kurt makes Blaine want things that can’t possibly be good for the band, that can’t at _all_ be good for their image. Kurt makes terrible jokes and beautiful music. Kurt makes Blaine want to dance.

Blaine downs the contents of his cup in two hard gulps and tosses the empty somewhere in the direction of the coffee table. Then he lets the heavy bass thump from the stereo rattle through his bones, abandons all pretense of logic or restraint in the face of the kind of party he knows how to appreciate, and steps out onto the dance floor.

 

+++

 

The number one most impossible and luckiest thing to ever happen in Blaine Anderson’s life comes at 2:35 on a Friday morning, in his own apartment, and it starts like this:

“I should go,” Kurt says, sounding regretful and tired and way, way too sober for a party like this. “Thank you for having me.”

“Hey, no, no,” says Blaine. “Come on, it’s late, stay.”

Kurt glances around warily at the revelry still going on in all directions. “Really, Blaine, I’m fine. I’m just tired. I was going to go home and get some sleep.”

“Sleep here,” Blaine says. “The whole band’s going to end up crashing here, and Santana and Brittany are going to wind up on the couch.” Kurt eyes him suspiciously.

“It’s a little loud,” he points out, and Blaine shrugs, loose and fluid with enough alcohol to kill off most of his better decision-making functions.

“My room’s quiet,” he says. “Crash with me.”

It’s not actually ‘quiet’ in Blaine’s bedroom so much as it’s, at least, ‘quieter’, once the door is closed behind them. Blaine scored the tiny ensuite half-bath when he and Mike moved in, mostly because Mike’s room is bigger _and_ Blaine takes way, way longer with the face and haircare products in the morning while Mike is trying to get into the apartment’s only shower. 

Blaine flops down on his back, leaving half the mattress free, and gestures lazily towards the bathroom door, if Kurt can even see him. Neither of them have bothered to turn on the lamp.

"Are you sure?" Kurt asks, and Blaine nods into the pillow.

"Go for it," he says. 

Five minutes ago Blaine would have said he could go all night, but here in the warm dark almost-quiet, sleep sounds like the most comfortable idea in the world. He's half dozing by the time the water shuts off in the bathroom and the covers under him are being tugged away. 

Out in the living room there's a hoot and a holler: Mike and Sam are showing off their moves. Blaine's left hand twitches to reach over for Kurt's in the dark. 

"I have a confession to make," Kurt says suddenly. 

"Mmm?" Blaine asks. Somebody messed with the laptop playlist, or ran out of songs and just put somebody's iPod on shuffle. Finn's, by the sound of it. _She said I’ve got to be honest, you’re wasting your time if you’re fishing ‘round here_.

"I'm not a bass player," Kurt says. "I never even touched one before three weeks ago. I had to borrow one for my audition, it was Rachel's idea, she made me try out, I never expected to actually get _in_ , but of course then the band was counting on me, and there was the _stage_ , and... please don't hate me," he finishes pathetically.

"Wait, what?" Blaine is to drunk to keep up, but a lot more sober than he suddenly wants to be. "You're a bass player. You're a great bass player. Well," Blaine amends, "you're not a _bad_ one, and you kept up with Finn, which is all that really counts."

"I learned from YouTube," Kurt admits. "I'm a singer. I'm also an actor, dancer, model, fashionista and _waiter_. I've been looking for my big break for so long that I don't even know what I'd do if I found out."

Blaine rubs at his eyes to help clear his head. "You don't want to be in the band?" he asks. They're supposed to leave the day after tomorrow.

Tina is going to flip. That should probably matter more than the sick empty pit in Blaine's stomach, like he's being left at the altar.

"I just want somebody to _see_ me," Kurt says. "That show last week was the first time anybody ever..."

Blaine rolls over onto his side, so he can look at the gray outline of Kurt's silhouette in the dark. "I see you," he says. 

"Do you?" Kurt asks. "Nobody ever has except for Rachel. When you're gay, and _different_ , in a small town--"

"Like Lima, Ohio?" Blaine asks. "I _get_ it, Kurt. We all get it. Or at least I do, and the other guys will, if you give them the chance."

"Do you even still want me?" Kurt asks. Blaine gives into his instincts and reaches across the comforter until his fingers brush the back of Kurt's hand.

"Do you still want us?" Blaine asks. "Bass player's not exactly a spotlight role."

Kurt belongs in a spotlight. It's obvious every time he walks into a room. Blaine is happy to share his, if Kurt is interested, but maybe Kurt wants one of his own. 

"I've never even heard you sing," Blaine realizes. 

“I can,” Kurt says. “If you tell me what you want me to--”

“Anything,” says Blaine. “Sing along to the music from the party. Just so I can hear your voice.” If it’s good, if Kurt is _good_ , Blaine can work him into their songs as second vocals. Kurt would have to be good, right? It’s _Kurt_.

“I don’t even really know the song,” Kurt says, and Blaine winces.

“It’s Finn’s, you’ll get used to it,” he says. “Or you won’t, if you leave, but please don’t leave just because of Finn’s taste in--”

“ _I said, I’ve got to be honest,_ ” Kurt sings tentatively, like he’s just feeling the song out. “ _I’ve been waiting for you all my life._ ”

Kurt’s lying on his side and hasn’t had any time to warm up, but his voice is steady and even, high and perfectly clear and so very, very _Kurt_. God, Blaine wants to duet with that voice so badly it's not even a euphemism.

"We can write you parts," Blaine says, because if they don’t go back to talking he’s going to find himself joining in on the next line. "If you stay with the band," with _me_ , Blaine thinks, _stay with me_ , "you've got to sing up there. If you want to."

"I want to," Kurt says. "If you want me to."

"I want..." Blaine bites his lip, glad to be invisible in the dark. "I _want_."

"Me, too," Kurt admits.

_You’ve got wits, you’ve got looks, you’ve got passion, but are you brave enough to stay with me tonight?_ the song asks right through the wall.

"Blaine," says Kurt. "This is the part where you kiss me."

**Author's Note:**

> Songs used in this fic:
> 
> Title: _I Wanna Be The One_ , fun.
> 
> Mike and Sam: _Prostitution Is The World's Oldest Profession (And I, Dear Madame, Am A Professional)_ , Cobra Starship  
> Puck: _Camisado_ , Panic! at the Disco  
> Tina: _The Sound Of Settling_ , Death Cab for Cutie  
> Finn: _Modern Way_ , Kaiser Chiefs  
> Kurt: _As Lovers Go_ , Dashboard Confessional


End file.
